Week 9

Aim: To do research on different aspects of musical theater history such as Economics, art, literature, fashion and technology, as well as theater and music.

George Moore: “The difficulty in life is the choice…the wrong way always seems the more reasonable.”

2. Read the article about the most famous Broadway composer and lyricist Rogers and HammersteinII.

With Richard Rodgers composing the music and Oscar Hammerstein II writing the words, the most successful writing team in the history of musical theater. Through a series of groundbreaking shows throughout the 1940’s and 1950’s, they changed the face of the American theater.

Richard Rodgers(1902-1979), achieved fame through twenty years of writing songs, form the 1920’s through the early 1940’s, with lyricist Lorenz Hart together they wrote more than 40 lighthearted, sophisticated musical comedies, including ON Your Toes, Babes In Arms, The Boys From Syracuse, I Married an Angel and Pal Joey.

At the same time, Oscar Hammerstein II (1895-1960) became famed for his work writing the words for operettas, or “light opera” which had its roots in 19^th century Europe; he collaborated with a number of composers, including Rudolf Friml and Sigmund Romberg. The shows he wrote include the Desert song, Rose-Marie and The New Moon. He tackled many challenging issues in his work, including racial issues, Show boat, written in 1927 with Jerome kern, and Carmen Jones, was an all-black revisiting of Georges Bizet’s tragic opera Carmen.

Rodgers and Hammerstein first collaborated in 1943 on Oklahoma!, a show that is widely considered to be the first true musical play, combining elements of musical comedy and operetta to create a more integrated, dramatic musical form than had been seen before. Their subsequent works include Carousel, Allegro, South Pacific, The King and I, Me and Juliet, Pipe Dream, Flower Drum Song and The Sound of music. They also wrote the movie musical, State fair, and for television, Cinderella. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musicals won many honors, including a total of 35 Tony Awards and 2 Emmy Awards.

Oscar Hammerstein II died in 1960, but Rodgers continued to write for the Broadway stage. No Strings, the first show he wrote without a partner, won Tony Awards fro both music and lyrics. He followed it with O I Hear A Waltz?, Two by Two, Rex and I Remember Mama, which open on Broadway in 1979, only a few months before Rodgers died.

Joshua Logan brought the idea of south Pacific to Rodgers and Hammerstein, although originally he only intended to be the show’s director. But Hammerstein found himself having trouble writing military jargon and Logan, who had served in the military, offered to help. Although, at this point, Hammerstein had not co-written a libretto for almost 200 years, he discovered that Logan was a helpful sounding board. And so Logan became Hammerstein’s co-author.

Joshua Logan was born in Texarkana, Texas in 1908 and became a leading director, writer and producer in theater and in movies. He attended writer and producer in theater and in movies. He attended Princeton University, but left before graduating to study with the famous Russian director and acting teacher, Konstantin Stanislavsky in Moscow.

In 1928 he was founding member of the University Players, a theater company on Cape Cod , with Henry Fonda and James Stewart , both of whom went on to become major stars. Logan directed his first Broadway play in 1935. His production of On Borrowed Time in 1935 was the first of string of major hit shows, including I Married an Angel, Knickerbocker Holiday , Morning’s at seven, Two for the show, and Higher and Higher. His service in World War 2 was postponed so that he could direct By Jupiter in 1942 before he left for war. He directed this is the army during his service and served with the U.S Air Force Combat Intelligence.

After the war, he had an impressive run of hit plays and musicals, including Anne Get Your Gun, Mister Roberts (which he also co- wrote), and South Pacific (for which he co- wrote the book).

He also had a successful movie career, directing many films including Picnic, Bus Stop and Camelot. He died in 1988.

James Michener wrote the original book, Tales of the south pacific, which Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein 2 and Joshua Logan adapted into south pacific.

James Michener was born in New York City in 1907 and grew up in Bucks Country, Pennsylvania. His first career was teaching teachers, after which he edited textbooks until he joined the Navy during World War 2. As a lieutenant junior grade he was stationed at Espiritu Santo in South Pacific. When he returned, he published Tales of the South Pacific, based on his wartime experience, and the books success began his career as one of America’s leading authors.

Tales of the South Pacific won Michener the 1948 Pulitzer Prize, and was, of course, the basis for South Pacific. Over the next 40 years, he wrote 23 novels, 5 art books, a book of sonnets and literally hundreds of articles, introduction, contributions to collections and other works. He began particularly known for well researched historical fiction, such as Hawaii, Chesapeake, Space, Texas, and Alaska.

Michener also ran for congress and took on political roles including serving as a cultural ambassador to many countries. He was a member of the Advisory Council to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the advisory committee of the U.S Postal Service.

In addition to his Pulitzer Prize, Michener received many honors, including the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award given by the United States and an award from the President’s Committee on the Art and Humanities.

South Pacific is one of the best examples of a unique American art form: the musical play. Musical theaters as we know it today evolved out of many traditional forms of entertainment from all over then world. Their transformation into musical happened right here in New York City, and to a large degree, thanks to Rodgers and Hammerstein, creators of South Pacific.

Musical and theater have co-existed, probably forever, and have been on American stages together since before the founding of the nation. Each immigrant group that arrived brought its own entertainments to add to the mix. Musical theater forms that originated in Vienna, London, Ireland, and Eastern Europe, and elsewhere all found new life in the United States. Home grown musical forms sprang up in New Orleans, the West and throughout the rest of the nation. And in the nineteenth century, uniquely American forms of theatrical entertainment began to emerge from this mix.

The modern American musical has roots in a range of musical entertainments. Revues were popular shows made up of unrelated sketches and songs, like Saturday Night Live. Many different kinds of revues, including minstrelsy, burlesque, vaudeville, and variety shows were designed to amuse an audience with popular music, broad humor, stereotypes and showgirls.

Operetta had its roots in Europe. It involved lighthearted, usually romantic stories and was geared to an urban audience. Oscar Hammerstein 2 was a master at writing the words for operettas for to decades before he began to work with Richard Rodgers.

Early American musical comedy grew out of vaudeville and music hall and was generally pitched at a working class audience. Richard Rodgers was lending composer of musical comedies for twenty years before he began to work with Oscar Hammerstein 2.

Throughout the 1920’s and 1930’s, all of these forms began to come together in new and interesting ways. But it was only when Rodgers and Hammerstein got together that the more serious, artistic, and integrating form known as the “book musical” came into being.

In 1943, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein 2 collaborated for the first time on Oklahoma, widely considered the first book a musical. Oklahoma! Told a narrative story with more depth and more developed characters then seen before. It also fully integrated dialogue, song, music, and dance to tell a story. Many musical historians consider this production the beginning of what is considered the golden age of musical theater. The team followed this breakthrough show with many other, including, of course, south pacific, along with the king and I and The Sound of Music.

The book musical tells much of its story as a play does, with spoken dialogue. It isn’t a loose collection of entertainments, like a revue, it isn’t sung throughout like an operetta, and it isn’t just a light story to provide an excuse for songs and jokes. A book musical has more complexity to it. The spoken dialogue is known in musical theater as the “book
" as distinct from the songs (the words to the songs are known as lyrics
), and it is much more important than in most early musical theater. But music is integral to the book musical as well. Key moments are translated into song. In South Pacific and other book musicals, spoken dialogue moves the story forward, but the most intense, most emotional, most crucial moments are told through song.

Many Broadway shows of our time continue the tradition of the book musical developed by Rodger and Hammerstein. Hairspray, Rent and Wicked are a few examples. Lincoln Center Theater has also brought many 21^st century book musical to the stage, including The Light in the Piazza and Dessa Rose.

When you watch the Lincoln center Theater production of South Pacific, look for the ways in which the story is told through the combination of music, dialogue and song. Many musical theater traditions maintain a vibrant presence in this show.

Listen to the CD of South Pacific. Have your class list as many observations as they can about the subjects, styles and presentation of the songs. What are the songs about? Do they tell a story? Do they stand on their own? What does the sound of the music tell them? In what ways are they similar to or different from each other?

(This show,Showboat, was the first Broadway score ever to have a coherent plot and integrated songs. Based on Edna Ferber's novel of the same name, Showboat is a story that takes place over a period of 50 years looking into the lives of the Hawks family, their showboat troop of actors, and the Cotton Blossom floating theater. The play deals with such themes as mixed marriages, gambling, infidelity, illegitimacy.

Journal# 20: Guy de Maupassant: “Whether we are describing a king, an assassin, a thief, an honest man…a nun, a young girl, or a stallholder in a market, it is always ourselves that we are describing.”

South Pacific got its start when the director Joshua Logan was working on a play called Mr. Roberts, which was set abroad a navy ship in the South Pacific during World War 2. The set designer, Jo Mielziner, suggested that Logan look at a book by James Michener, Tales of the South Pacific, which was based on Michener’s experience and observation while stationed in the region during the war. Mielziner thought it would be helpful background reading.

Tales of the South Pacific was made up of eighteen loosely linked stories. Logan decided to try to buy the right adapts one of the stories, “Fo’Dolla,” for the stage. “Fo’Dolla,” was the story doomed romance between an American officer and a young Tonkinese woman, and it eventually inspired the story of Lieutenant Joe Cable and Liat in South Pacific. But first, Logan needed to find someone to write a play based on the story his interest was only in directing it.

Logan mentioned his idea to Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein 2. When they read Tales of the South Pacific, they decided to buy the rights to all eighteen stories. And in the end, every single story from Michener’s book contributes something to the finished musical.

When Rodgers and Hammerstein collaborated, Hammerstein almost always wrote the words first, and then Rodgers set them to music. Hammerstein usually wrote both the words to the songs and the spoken text, which is known in the theater as the “book”. But he found himself stuck when he started to write the book for Tales from the South Pacific. He just couldn’t write the military characters. He had never been to war, and he didn’t know how the characters would talk or behave. Joshua Logan had served in the U.S. Army during the war, so Hammerstein asked him to come to his house in Pennysylvania to help make sure he got the military details right. Logan planned to stay for a day to five some pointers. Instead, he and Hammerstein ended up writing the entire script as a joint effort. Logan didn’t leave until it was done—only ten days after they started.

Hammerstein wrote all of the song lyrics on his own, and Rodgers then set them to music. Sometimes that came easily. A famous anecdote tells that Hammerstein shared the words to “Bali Ha’i” over a working lunch, and Rodgers immediately sketched out the tune right there at the table. Other songswere not so easy. “Younger Than Springtime,” the love song that Lieutenant Cable sings to Liat, was only writtern after Joshua Logan has insisted that the first two attempts at songs for that spot were not good enough. Rodgers was irritated at hacing his songs judged, but the results suggest that the teamwork was a success.

South Pacific opened on Broadway on April 7, 1949 and was an immediate sensation. The reviews were raves, the show was a smash hit and it ran for 1, 925 performances, finally closing in 1954. It won 9 Tony Awards and the Pultizer Prize.

Though it has not had a Broadway revival since, it has been staged all over the country and around the world, and it was adapted into both a 1958 movie and a 2001 television special.

On the island of Espiritu Santo in the South Pacific during World War II, Nellie Forbush, a U.S. Navy nurse, visits French plantation owner Emile de Becque. They have only kown each other for a few weeks, but are in love. He reveals that he left France for this island long ago because he killed a wicked man. Nellie accepts this and agrees to think about his suggestion that they share their lives.

U.S. Navy sailors, Seabees and Marines bargain for local souvenirs with Bloody Mary, an entrepreneurial local woman, and Luther Bills, a Seabee who always has a plan. Them men lament the lack of women on the island. When Navy nurses jog through and Nellie stops to chat with Billis, it only reminds the men how lonely theyare for female company. Billis wants to go to the nearby island of Bali Ha’i, which has both exotic keepsakes and women, but only officers can sign out boats for the trip.

Lieutenant Joe Cable arrives, having just flown in from another island. Billis and Bloody Mary interest Lt. Cable in Bali Ha’i, but he is intent on talking to Commander Harbison and Captain Brackett. Cable is undertaking a dangerous spying mission on Marie Loiuse Island and has come to enlist Emile de Becque to join him, since de Becque knows the island well.

Brackett and Harbison ask Nellie to gather information on Emile de Becque to help them enlist him in their cause. Harbison tells Brackett confidentially that the spies won’t survive more than a week on their mission, but Brackett replies that it could still help America win the war.

Nellie tells Lt. Cable that she has gotten a letter from her mother disapproving of her romance with Emile de Becque because of their different backgrounds. After Billis brings Nellie the rare treat of hot water she showers and announces that she has decided to break up with Emile. The nurses leave, and Emile arrives to invite Nellie to a party he is giving to introduce her to his friends. He tells her more about himself, his belief that all men are created equal, and why he killed a man. Then he proposes to her. They kiss.

Brackett, Harbison and Cable ask Emile to take part in the dangerous spying mission. He says no; he will not put his life with Nellie at risk, even for such an important cause.

Cable and Billis go to Bali Ha’i. Bloody Mary pushes Cable to meet her daughter, Liat, and they fall instantly in love.

After Emile’s party, he and Nellie are alone and in love. When Emile’s children, Ngana and Jerome, enter she finds them adorable. When she realizes that they are Emile’s and that their mother was Polynesian, she leaves abruptly.

The troops are entertained by the “Thanksgiving Follies,” with Nellie as host, star and choreographer and Billis as producer, stage manager, and lperformer. Emile comes with flowers for Nellie. Billis tells him that Nellie has been crying and has asked for a transfer to another island. Emile insists he has to see her, but Billis says he has to wait until after the show. Cable comes looking for Billis to get him a boat so he can go to Liat. He can’t sign out his own boat because he has been hospitalized for malaria, but he cannot wait to see Liat again. Liat and Bloody Mary enter with the news that a French planter wants to marry Liat. Cable says she can’t marry the planter, but that he himself can’t marry her. He Onstage, Nellie, Billis and the nurses perform the comic song “Honey Bun”.

After the show, Luther gives Nellie Emile’s flowers. She and Cable talk and realize that their prejudices are keeping them from the people they love, but don’t think they can help it. Nellie tells Emile that she can’t marry him because his first wife was Polynesian. She asks Cable to explain, and he says bitterly that they have been carefully taught to hate and fear. Now that he has lost Nellie, Emile agrees to go on the dangerous mission with Cable after all.

Cable and Emile send important reports back from behind enemy lines. Nellie realizes that Emile has gone on the mission, and at the same time learns that Lt. Cable has died. She realizes how much she loves Emile and that letting her prejudices keep them apart is a mistake. Bloody Mary and Liat come looking for Cable, because Liat will not marry anyone else. Nellie embraces Liat.

The troops are all preparing to move out now that the successful spy mission has turned the tide of the war. Nellie, however, is staying behind with a small crew. She goes to care for Emile’s children and tells them that she loves them very much. Emile returns home to hear that, and reunited, he, Nellie and the children sit down to a meal together.

“ The most important thing about South Pacific is that by the time it opened, World War II had been over for only four years. And the battles in the South Pacific region were some of the bloodiest, most brutal battles of World War II. Most people nowadays know more about the European front of the war, but when South Pacific opened, most of the people on the audience and in the show itself would have known people who served in the South Pacific or even been there themselves. And they knew how serious it was. “This is something very new for a musical. If you look at Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, people in the audience may or may not have even been to Oklahoma. In any case, few people were still alive who had been to Oklahoma in 1906, the period in which the play is set. But everybody in the audience of South Pacific had lived through it. They had shared common knowledge, so whatever was happy and romantic on stage would be understood in relation to the shadows that people had experienced.

“To think of what it was like, imagine writing a musical about 9/11 four years after it happened.

“Rodgers and Hammerstein were always pushing the envelope. Their show Carousel had a different hero at the center—and he dies. South Pacific also has a death in it and all sorts of very real problems. That was not seen in a musical before. Musicals up until then were frothy and had nothing to do with reality, for the most part. The fact that it was contemporary, that there was no choreography to speak of, no costumes to speak of, these decisions were all revolutionary. They changed the musical theater forever. Rodgers and Hammerstein would move a step ahead, people would follow, and they would move another step ahead.

“It wasn’t an easy choice. Friends of Michener begged him to convince Rodgers and Hammerstein to drop the song ‘You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught,’ which says that racism is learned. Hammerstein’s response was ‘that’s what the show’s about.’

“When the national tour of South Pacific played Atlanta, Georgia in 1954, the Georgia state legislature drafted a bill to have the song ‘You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught,’ banned. Rodgers and Hammerstein refused. The legislature backed down and the song was performed. And South Pacific was not an exception for Rodgers and Hammerstein. Their next play was The King and I [about the friendship and respect between an Englishwoman and the King of Siam, now Thailand], and their last musical was the The South of Music, the first musical to deal with the Nazis.

“Hammerstein had a moral vision of what a musical can do. So did Rodgers, but I think Hammerstein was the leader in that. He had written Show Boat, [which was also about racism and the right to marry the person you love]. He was bolder. He was a huge leader in anti- Nazi movements even before World War II. He was a very engaged citizen.

“So many people came back from the south pacific after the war changed forever. Some soldiers did marry Asian wives. Michener said it changed his life completely. I can’t imagine a single GI who wouldn’t say it changed everything. For everyone. Blacks had greater influence in American culture because they had better jobs during World War II and woman had greater influence because they had better jobs during the war.

“It was brave to take on such serious issues in a musical, but it was the right show in the right time. They weren’t trying to alienate their audiences. They were trying to write a hit. And they did. It was huge. There’s a joke from the time: a woman went to the box office with two tickets to south pacific and asked to return one. They asked her why, and she said her husband had died. The said ‘surely you could get a friend to go with you.’ She replied, ‘They’re all at the funeral.’ So the show was such a hot ticket that someone might miss her own husband’s funeral to see it.

“It’s really essential to remember not only how important south pacific was but also how entertaining it was. If it had been like taking medicine, it wouldn’t have run for so many performances. Though the show is adapted from James Michener’s Tales of the south pacific, Rodgers and Hammerstein invented the whole Thanksgiving Follies performance at the beginning of the second act that’s not anywhere in Michener’s book because they knew that the audience needed something fun at that point.

“From the great remove of six decades we can easily admire the craftsmanship of Richard Rodgers, Hammerstein, and co-writer Joshua Logan; it is far more difficult to appreciate their incredible daring and courage in capturing such a raw and bitter moment in American history. Perhaps the best way to understand it is to remember Michener’s own words, from the conclusion of his first chapter of Tales of the south pacific;

They will live a long time, these men of the south pacific. They had an American quality. They, like their victories, will be remembered as long as our generation lives. After that…longer and longer shadows will obscure them, until their Guadalcanal sounds distant on the ear like Shiloh and valley forge.”

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear
You've got to be taught
From year to Year
It's got to be drummed
in your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught

You've got to be taught
To be Afraid
Of people whose eyes
are oddly made
And people whose skin
Is a different shade
You've got to be carefully taught

You've got to be taught
Before it's too late
Before you are 6 or 7 or 8
To hate all the people
your relatives hate
You've got to be carefully taught

1.What is the main idea behind the words in the song?
2. Thinking back to your childhood, what was the first exposure you encountered to a prejudice( any kind)?

HW#33 Describe an experience in your life where you feel you were taught to be prejudiced.

Journal #22 Interpret the quotation-Blaise Pascal: “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.”

South Pacific is based on a story written in 1949, about events that took place during World War II. So what do the artists who brought it to the stage think it has to say to a 21^st Century audience? Plenty.

As the Artistic Director of Lincoln Center Theater, Andre Bishop is the person who chooses what plays are produced. Why did he decide to present South Pacific now? Only because he couldn’t do it sooner.

He explains: “I didn’t really choose to produce South Pacific at this time; the fact is that I have wanted to produce it for years and have badgered the Rodgers & Hammerstein office about doing it at Lincoln Center Theater for at least ten years.

“South Pacific is my favorite musical,” he continues. “Always has been and always will be.” And he feels that Lincoln Center Theater is exactly the right place for the show. “What excites me is the intimacy of the Beaumont in terms of audience relationship to the stage, and the vastness of the stage itself. We can really do a lovely production, and we are able to have an enormous cast and a very large orchestra. That would not necessarily happen in a commercial situation. And the fact is that everybody knows the show but actually very few people have SEEN it”.

Not only is South Pacific a wonderful show, Bishop says it is as meaningful today as ever. “Yes, South Pacific was topical when it was written, because the war in the Pacific had ended a few years earlier,” he explains, “and the Michener book came out just the year before. And many of the men and some of the women in the chorus had actually been in the military and had actually served in the South Pacific. But the piece is relevant today. It is Romantic, and we are all lonely at times. It is about War, and we are a nation at war. It is about taking over a culture and imposing our own. We do that everywhere. It is about people trying to find a common language. As Larry Maslon says in the book (The South Pacific Companion, Simon & Schuster, May 2008), there is huge amount of dialogue and many songs that are about trying to be understood. Well that is pretty topical. And it is about racism, and we still live in a racist world. And, finally it is about something that probably did not strike anyone in 1949, which is a new definition of the family.

The piece begins and ends with a domestic scene, and the final scene is one of harmony, of individuals from very different worlds coming together and sharing a meal. And today the American family, at least in some parts of the USA, is made up of disparate yet harmonious elements. Adoptions from China and Romania. Gay men and women having children. Races intermarrying, which in 1949 was illegal in some states.

Andre Bishop notes that South Pacific is an unusual undertaking for him and Lincoln Center Theater, and one he cares deeply about. “I am mostly interested in producing new musicals, so it is rare that we do a revival of a classic. And plenty of classic musicals have been revived lately. But I took into account the fact that the show has never really been produced by a “Broadway” theater since the original 1949 production. A lot of people want to see it. But what I really took into account is what I am lucky enough to always be able to take into account: my deep love for this piece and my hope that we have found first-rate artists to bring it to life once again.”

Director Bart Sher says the he entered South Pacific from four different points. The first point of entry was the work of the novelist James Michener, and his evocation of “a big, adventurous American experience of the 1940’s and 1950’s.” They second was “the south of that experience: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s beautiful, innocent, melodic American sound.” The third was the co-writer and original director Joshua Logan’s “deeply realistic” work. And the last was the real history in the piece, and the understanding of American power abroad.

“South Pacific is one of those rare musicals that was written immediately following actual events,” Sher says. “It was written in 1949 as a response to the war. It’s almost like a national memory, an expressin of survival, and for this reason it is a profoundly resonant show. So, there are certain gestures that have to be made—to Rodgers and Hammerstein, to James Michener, and to this island way of life, this “Bali Ha’i-ness” as we call it.”

Sher worked with his designers for almost a year to explore the ideas, demands and possibilities of the play for his production.

Set designer Michael Yeargan found ways to bring to the stage Sher’s sense of entering the play through one key element at a time.

“It’s important that the first thing you encounter when you come to the show is Michener’s words followed by Rodger and Hammerstein’s music,” Sher explains. Yeargan’s solution? “When you enter the theater, a big front curtain shows the prologue from Michener’s Tales of The South Pacific, Sher explains. “Then the stage pulls back and you see and hear the 30-piece orchestra.” Yeargan explains that this way of bringing in Rodgers and Hammerstein grew out of his own personal wishes. “I’m so sick and tired of going to a musical and hearing the orchestra over speakers, but never seeing it,” he says. “We’ve got a 30-piece orchestra so we though the whole floor could reveal the orchestra while it’s playing this fantastic Rodgers and Hammerstein overture”.

HW #34 Find one musical that has been produced on Broadway. Print out a copy of the synopsis of the musical together with the playbill or any photos of the musical.